Tom, you're wasting your time trying to use reason with these people.

As the old one goes, there is none so stupid as those who refuse to hear. They are quite pitiful really.

They may be plain stupid, fellow traveling rip of merchants, or people who's careers are now dependant on the con, but whatever it is, reason has no place in their thinking today.

Geoff

Your defence of Phil Jones is taurine fertilizer. I’ve heard it ad nauseam and I find it quite insulting that anyone would think I am that stupid.

It is one thing to be insulted by the “know nothing, don’t want to know anything, made up my mind, never mind the evidence, I’m an expert on physics, it’s all a conspiracy” mob. I take that from whence it comes.

But to be fed this pap by people who really ought to know better is beyond the pale.

The word “trick” has a legitimate usage in scientific discourse as in “a clever trick to solve a mathematical problem”. The proof of Pythagoras’ theorem involves a clever trick. I do not object to the use of the word “trick”. I object to the use of the word trick juxtaposed with the word hide in connection with the display of data in a scientific paper.

Here is what Jones wrote:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd (sic) from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

The only reasonable construction I can place on this is as follows:

Jones was aware of some data that contradicted the thesis of some paper he planned to publish. He employed a “trick” – one used by Michael Mann of hockey stick fame – to hid a decline in temperature.

In other words, in plain English, he set out to fudge his results.

This one email absolutely discredits both Jones and Mann. They are now damaged goods. Every day they remain at their posts damages the reputation of the entire discipline. That is a fact. It may not be a fact that you like; but it is nonetheless a fact. Call it an “INCONVENIENT TRUTH” if you like.

Do me one favour. Refrain from trying to defend those two shyster scientists to me. The mere mention of their names makes my blood boil. I’d like to kick them both in the you-know-whats

Geoff, let's examine two quotes first:

'If you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid - not only what you think is right about it' - Richard Feynman.

'Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?' - Phil Jones.

Whom do you think is the more honest scientist?

Anyways, you want names, huh? (I'm sure it would be purely pedantic of me to ask for the names of the 'vast majority' of scientists you lot keep banging on about ... but I digress).

Richard Tol, who supports emission reduction, accused Stern of systematic selection bias, and called his report 'alarmist and incompetent'. William Nordhaus called it 'absurd'. Nigel Lawson said that, 'if I had to sum up the Stern report in a single word, I would say it is fraudulent,' and compared it to Tony Blair's infamous Iraq dossier.

As for the Zero Carbon Australia report, that was roundly criticized right here on OLO. But, of course, you'll say, there's those wicked skeptics again.

Now let us examine the three inquiries into 'climategate' (ghastly word, but sadly it stuck): the first, the Science and Technology Committee, was a government committee set up to report on government policy, on the eve of an election - surely only a die-hard cynic would question its rigour! Nonetheless, committee member Graham Stringer - the only scientist on the Science and Technology Committee - made some strongly dissenting opinions, and called its result 'an inadequate report that doesn’t do the job'.

The laughably named 'Science Assessment Panel' who chaired by the hopelessly compromised Lord Oxburgh, who later admitted that 'the science was not the subject of our study.' However, the dissenting notes from Michael Kelly make interesting reading: 'I think it is easy to see how peer review within tight networks can allow new orthodoxies to appear and get established.' And this: 'I take real exception to having simulation runs described as experiments ... It does a disservice to centuries of real experimentation and allows simulations output to be considered as real data. This last is a very serious matter, as it can lead to the idea that real "real data" might be wrong simply because it disagrees with the models!'

The final report, chaired by Muir Russell, and featuring such 'independent' members as vocal climate alarmist Richard Horton and climate change advisor and UEA Old Boy Geoffrey Boulton, essentially relied solely on the evidence of the accused. No dissenting voices were heard.

The Muir Russell report has been criticised by Graham Stringer as inadequate and a failure. Even Phil Willis, former chair of the Science and Technology Committee, was dismayed, and called it 'sleight of hand'.

Finally, you can bleat all you like about FOI, but the fact remains that Phil Jones broke the law. Are you really fine with that?

Steven: your comment http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11244#189789

Sorry Steven, this is where you are going off the rails. Yes, Phil Jones was working on a paper, with Keith Briffa no less. You do however conflate the "trick" and unfortunately (like so many others) misinterpret "hide the decline" (btw, the ‘decline’ hasn’t been ‘hidden’, there is much literature on it).

"Hide the decline" is all to do with the significance of the "divergence problem”. The reliability (of the method) is tested by omitting some of the instrumental data and seeing how a reconstruction matches the known climate at some past time (comparing with studies from volcanic residue, micro-flora, isotopes, etc).

Reconstructions can be tested against historical sources of climate information that go back centuries, and overall reliability is tested with different methodologies, and with different proxy choices (tree rings, corals, ice cores, ocean sediments, stalagmites, etc). If they vary widely, then proxy reconstructions wouldn’t be very reliable. However, if they are consistent then we can have confidence they’re robust. That’s why Michael Mann's "hockey stick” wasn't so important in AR4 – there’s dozens of hockey sticks, from many different proxies and from many different sources, that all show the same thing – the warming trend is up. Sure, the methodology of any proxy reconstruction is complicated (I’m no expert) – but, the principles are not - you should understand this.

Obviously, uncertainties do increase the further you go back in time - and the ‘divergence problem’ for trees less than 50 yrs old is problematic and further research is required to explain the ‘divergence’ – but you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Much of the misinformation (intentional or otherwise) that surrounds this issue is because people mistake a reconstruction of the past with a present ‘attribution’ – and of course, that’s impossible.

You have run a great thread so far Steven, it would be a shame to see you fall down because off preferential bias or inadvertent misinterpretation of a few hacked emails.

Steven-
Well if that's your position there's not much more to be said. You're emotionally attached to your position. However if you're not totally closed, you might look at the account at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/climategate-bogus-sceptics-lies.

The "decline" was in temperatures inferred from a small group of tree-ring data from a particular area that, unlike most tree-ring data, did not correlate with actual temperature measurements in the same area. The real data were used in global syntheses, so the treatment of that small group of tree-ring data had no effect at all on global syntheses. And this was all in 1999, before the more recent alleged "decline" in global temperature had become apparent, so the remark could not have referred to that.

As to the "hockey stick", those analyses have been reworked with more sophisticated methods and the broad conclusion has survived that the medieval warm period was not as warm as the present.

I think there is little basis for your colourful language, however cleverly disguised. Certainly you need to look at more than one sentence out of any context before you condemn so totally.